Intel yesterday released their Coffee Lake generation processors. The Z370 motherboards are available alright, the processors however now. We did some rounds here in the Netherlands and availability is dramatic. Intel supplied a dozen or two of the high-end specced processors to distributors, and that’s it.

Meanwhile checking some price engines, the stock availability in Europe has run dry. In the USA the 8700k is also out of stock, I did notice the 8600k on Newegg though.

In the UK some shops are hugely milking the procs they can actually sell. One of the bigger etailer for example decided to test and bin the procs they had, and have pre-binned 5Ghz versions for £500, 5.1Ghz for £600 or 5.2Ghz for £800 in-stock.

A normal 8700k should cost £360, but, that one of course is not available and on pre-order only. Considering most if not all stock 8700K procs will already do 5.1 GHz that’s really taking an advantage of your customers – guys, £800 is like 899 euros / 1050 USD (!).

As to why the availability is this low, nobody really knows and certainly not something we have seen or is expected often from Intel. Production is the same 14nm fab node one as Kaby Lake uses. Intel certainly will not shed any light on this. We have however heard rumors that there is lots of Kaby lake stock (processors and chipsets) left, perhaps they will be waiting to clear that stock fist before making Coffee Lake available in good volume, that however remains speculation of course.

It once again feels like rushed launch, a paper launch mostly with incredibly low stock available.